One for the Road

Jul 17, 2019 | News

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“Hurry, Hurry! Shoot! SHOOT!

(And other helpful comments.)

Towards the end of his career in Africa, Robert Ruark had one particular tracker named Metheke without whom, he wrote, “I feel naked in the bush.” He does not make it clear exactly who Metheke worked for when Ruark was not around. Presumably, it was one of the Ker & Downey professional hunters, but Metheke always seemed able to detach himself to accompany Ruark, no matter who he was hunting with at the time. Or so Ruark would have us believe. He was Man Friday to Ruark’s Robinson Crusoe.

Ruark was very adept at creating ideal situations that embed themselves in your mind, making you seek out such perfection on every hunting trip henceforth. Alas, perfection in hunting — and especially in hunting companions — is a very scarce commodity. On rare occasions I have met trackers in Africa who compare favorably with the sainted Metheke. Lekina Sandeti, a Masai who works for Robin Hurt in Tanzania, is one. Cuno, who worked for Chris Dandridge in Botswana, is another; I never did know Cuno’s surname. Nor did I know Charles’s surname, who was Clive Eaton’s tracker and always dressed in a shirt and hat more in keeping with a beach in Hawaii than on the track of a Cape buffalo. His attire belied his ability, however, which was second to none when it came to finding game and tracking it.

Books and stories from old Africa often depicted trackers and gun bearers in less than flattering terms. Some were outright racist to a point which, in this day and age, causes even the most non-politically-correct to cringe. Even those who purported to like and respect the safari staff were often condescending in their treatment of native people and their foibles. Most wrote about their trackers the way a wingshooter writes about a particularly gifted bird dog. Ruark, I hasten to add, did like and respect them. At times he was critical, but never condescending.

I don’t claim to be any less inherently racist — or at least, race-conscious — than other men of my age and background, but I have always tried to write about Lekina, Cuno, Charles, and the others in the same terms I wrote about the white professionals who headed up safaris. Perhaps this is because, 20 years before I ever went on safari in Africa, I went there as a freelance foreign correspondent and spent long periods living in grass huts, mud huts, and, on occasion, refugee and guerrilla camps. (Grass huts, by the way, are the most comfortable, and you become fond of the lizards that scurry around.)

In the course of that and later such expeditions, I learned enough Swahili to get by, or at least enough to show the trackers I was making the attempt, and this always seemed to put them on my side. Earning the respect of your trackers is, of course, the best case. Failing that, not incurring their enmity is something to be desired. One time, I was told about a client in Botswana, hunting with some Bushmen, who made the mistake of treating them badly, constantly denigrating them and generally being a boor. It has been my experience that people respond in kind, and that a little politeness goes a long way. At any rate, the Bushmen determined on some revenge. Knowing they could go long periods without water, while the fat American needed a drink every fifteen minutes, they took him out one morning and did a long, looping circle under the hot sun, with no water. Hours later, dehydrated, hallucinatory, and almost dead with fatigue, they delivered him back to camp. I don’t know whether he changed his ways, but the guides certainly got a bit of their own back.

Sometimes it’s not a matter of respect, mutual or otherwise, but simply competence. For every superb Lekina or Cuno, I have met trackers and other staff that seem to have been hired at short notice out of the local saloon, and have no more idea about hunting than if they’d been hired to teach quantum physics. One time, I was trying to locate a wounded wildebeest in the thick bush of Natal. With no tracks or blood trail, going back the next day to search for it was like looking for the proverbial needle, but we had to try.

We split up, with the PH and one tracker going one way, and a tracker and me going the other. By some miracle, a lone wildebeest bull appeared on an open slope about 200 yards distant. We had no shooting sticks, and no convenient tree. I was studying the bull in my binoculars while the tracker gesticulated wildly, insisting it was the wounded animal. My only chance was an offhand shot.

“Hurry!” he shouted. “Shoot! Shoot!”

Already out of breath, nervous, I tried to place the dancing crosshairs somewhere near the shoulder, and yanked the trigger with predictable results. The bull melted into the undergrowth. My guide looked at me, practically in tears. “Why you not shoot?” he asked, obviously thinking that killing an animal with a rifle required nothing more than pointing it in more or less the right direction and pulling the trigger. The wounded bull — if it was our bull — was gone, then and for all time. I should add that it was a hell of a head.

Guides like that make you even more nervous and likely to miss. Others, like Lekina, know that their own chances of survival go up considerably if they keep you calm in a tight situation, and try to make things easier rather than harder. Shouting “Shoot, shoot!” when the client is either not ready, or not in a good position to do so, accomplishes all the wrong things.

I’ve heard of, although I’ve never experienced, the extreme case of a guide running on ahead to try to spot a wounded animal, and then turning around and shouting to the hunter to “Shoot!” when he can’t even see it from where he is. And, naturally, the shout then spooks the beast to make tracks.

On my first safari in Botswana, my professional hunter was a Tswana by the name of Patrick Mmalane, a Sandhurst graduate and captain in the Botswana Defence Force. He had signed on as a professional hunter with Safari South. Naturally, he being black as the ace of spades, I insisted on referring to him as my “white hunter,” which caused great mirth among the trackers. Since Patrick and I both held the Queen’s Commission, we declared our end of the dining table to be the officers’ mess. We became quite good friends, and I went back the following year for a four-week odyssey wherein we drove around Botswana, wingshooting, seeing the sights, and setting a number of local beer-drinking records.

Patrick eventually left hunting and rejoined the BDF, and the last I heard he was a lieutenant-colonel. I mention all this because it was interesting to see his relationship with our trackers. They were Bushmen, in whole or in part, and as at home in the bush as Patrick and I were on a drill square. While Patrick was good with a rifle, and held command in an easy grip, he was not a tracker, and game spotting was not his long suit. The trackers treated him with the same somewhat bemused respect that an experienced sergeant-major accords to a newly appointed young officer.

In the end, we all proved ourselves to each other — and earned whatever respect we had — through our own abilities, and by the end of the week, one Cape buffalo bull and several lesser species later, we all got along with a kind of easy familiarity. Everyone did his job, no one screwed up, and we had a pretty happy ship.

It would be nice to be able to say that eventually I ended up with one tracker who did for me what Metheke did for Ruark, but those were other days. A tracker/gun bearer/factotum of the Metheke stamp is either a distant memory or, more likely, an ideal that never really existed — certainly not for visiting client-hunters like Ruark, or me.

One of my most treasured memories of hunting in Africa, however, is when, on my second safari with him, Lekina Sandeti invited me to be a guest in his hut, and to drink a cup of the buttermilk-like concoction that is a staple of Masai life. This was, I was told by my PH, a great honor. Whether Metheke ever did the same for Robert Ruark, I don’t know. As I say, those were different times[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_btn title=”View article in Ezine” color=”chino” align=”center” link=”url:https%3A%2F%2Fafricanhuntinggazette.com%2Fjuly-aug-sep-2019%2F%23africanhuntinggazette-ezine-july%2F146-147|||”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Loxodonta Africana

May 27, 2019 | News

Loxodonta Africana

What a powerful name for the world’s greatest land animal.

Today, the landlocked, small southern African country of Botswana, with a little over a million people took arguably the biggest decision in living memory (or mine anyway) regarding how it manages its own wildlife.

This is an arid country, with an average rainfall of 440mm, less than half the world’s average. It is dependent on exporting some of the world’s best diamonds, hugely reliant on beef exports and in particular, exporting its ecotourism experience as it showcases the world’s greatest wetland – the Okavango Delta. But the cross it has to bear is the unenviable task of managing a natural behemoth. A monster that consumes 26 000 (twenty-six thousand) tons, or 58 000 000 (fifty-eight million) pounds of foliage a day!

This is the herd of Botswana’s African elephants and Africa’s largest by miles. Conservatively speaking at 130 000 animals – number many questions being too low, they consume 200kg of leaves and grass, each …a day!

Some of the variables and factors this country has had to grapple with include:

1. Listening to, consulting with, empathizing, working out how to compensate the rural communities who have the ongoing challenge of the human-wildlife conflict to deal with. These beasts raid and destroy their crops and livelihoods and when working with and for the safari operators in the remote rural areas – they stood to benefit from this challenging dilemma. They are at the centre of where this is all happening.
2. Pleasing photo tourists who want to experience these beasts up close and personal on foot, on a boat or on the back of a land cruiser and seldom understand the concept of sustainable utilization or the challenges of human-wildlife conflict.
3. Keeping ivory poachers away as they’ll do anything to satisfy the demand for illegal ivory markets, particularly when they have no resistance.
4. Hunters who are prepared to pay handsomely for a limited number of trophy bull elephants each year through operators that manage the more remote areas not utilized by tourists.
5. A lucrative side industry from the management of elephant numbers, call it culling. This benefits thousands of local inhabitants with arguably one of the purest forms of a renewable, sustainable utilization of resources, that after all is theirs.
6. Animal rightists who want zero hunting anywhere – let alone in Botswana. They start petitions and campaign for eco-tourists to boycott Botswana should they opt to lift its ban on hunting.
7. Photographic safari operators, who are disguised animal rightists, working with National Geographic of all companies, who want everything on their terms and even went into business with the ex-President as a tactic to close down hunting and are still today, very powerful eco-tourism players.
8. You have ‘editors’ and journalists bringing out books, one most recently called the Last Elephant – (as if these animals are on the verge of extinction) that conveniently sideline Namibia’s elephant success story who coincidently work with communities in an even drier country with way less elephant to manage and it is prospering.

All this is happening while there is a tsunami of international pressure, from ‘Conservation bodies,’ interested groups, countries, politicians, celebrities, all seeking their moment in the sun – around a topic they know nothing, at worse, or very little at best, about.

This is a Botswana problem – not a global, African, or a southern African problem.

And so, as the press conference starts at 1400 on the 23^rd of May 2019, explaining why they have lifted the ban on hunting elephant, I salute this great country.

What a bold decision, taken for the right reasons, in the face of such adversity. What a lesson for us all.

Click here to view the letter of The Botswana Lifting of Ban

Politics and Hunting in Botswana

May 7, 2019 | News

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Politics and Hunting in Botswana

By Dr John Ledger

In 2014 the then President of Botswana, Ian Khama, unexpectedly announced the banning of all hunting in his country. This caused consternation in the hunting community and brought confusion and distress to local rural communities around hunting areas who had benefited materially and financially from the hunting industry. They were simply cut off from an important source of money, protein and other wildlife products and work opportunities. It has been said that former President Khama was strongly influenced by animal rights and anti-hunting activists. Whichever way you look at it, the lack of consultation and proper planning of the hunting ban was shameful.

But as they say, what goes around comes around. Just over four years down the line, Botswana has a new President, and one with a different style to his predecessor, in that he is apparently more willing to listen to the people. And the people tell him that they are suffering damage to their homes, crops, and even loss of life resulting from the impacts of wild animals which, since the hunting ban, are of no value to them. President Masisi appointed a committee (‘The Hunting Ban SubCommittee of Cabinet’) to consult the people through tribal meetings known as ‘kgotlas’, where everyone has an opportunity to be heard. In its formal report back (in the form of ‘Handover Notes’) to the President, the subcommittee made the following key points:

“From the submissions made by the communities and other stakeholders, the Committee as assigned by Your Excellency, found it necessary to propose the following recommendations, stated here in summary form.

Hunting ban be lifted;
Develop a legal framework that will create an enabling environment for growth of safari hunting industry;
Manage Botswana elephant population within its historic range;
Department of Wildlife and National Parks (DWNP) should undertake an effective community outreach program within the elephant range for Human Elephant Conflict mitigation;
Strategically placed human wildlife conflict fences be constructed in key hotspot areas;
Game ranches be demarcated to serve as buffers between communal and wildlife areas;
Compensation for damage caused by wildlife, ex gratia amounts and the list of species that attract compensation be reviewed. In addition, other models that alleviate compensation burden on Government be considered;
All wildlife migratory routes that are not beneficial to the country’s conservation efforts be closed;
The Kgalagadi southwesterly antelope migratory route into South Africa should be closed by demarcating game ranches between the communal areas and Kgalagadi Wildlife Management Areas;
Regular but limited elephant culling be introduced and establishment of elephant meat canning, including production of pet food and processing into other by-products.”

Some of these submissions made by rural communities are rather bizarre, and unlikely to be implemented by government, but it should be remembered that these are people who are so angry and frustrated by the impacts of wild animals, especially elephants, that their emotions have boiled over to the extent that they have come up with the idea of culling them and turning them into pet food! These thoughts have certainly caused a furore among the animal-rightists, but I doubt any of them have had family members killed by elephants. It also seems improbable that the government would sanction such activities, or unrealistic ideas for fences, but the realities of elephant management in the long run are that someone has to have the courage to take the ‘tough love’ road, as difficult as that may seem.

The important point is that the debate on the role of wildlife in Botswana has been re-opened and government has an opportunity to come up with some innovative policies regarding the relationship between people and wildlife outside the formally protected areas of the country. There is little doubt that the people of Botswana have been looking with interest at the wildlife policies of their neighbour, Namibia, where community conservation programmes have resulted in a high level of tolerance by people for wildlife, because they benefit from its presence. These benefits range from tourism and hospitality, from subsistence and trophy hunting that can be conducted in areas that are not suitable for photographic safaris, and from the breeding, sale and relocation of sought-after species.

There is no good reason why Botswana cannot implement a sound national wildlife management policy that will see rural communities benefitting from the wild animals living on their land. Benefits from the wildlife sharing space with humans results in tolerance. There are limits to tolerance, however, and predators will always require management and control when they exceed the bounds of tolerance. Namibia has learned how to do this, and reach a balance between the rights of stock farmers and the tourism benefits of seeing predators in adjacent areas. Custodianship must benefit the custodians, and wildlife must be able to make a financial contribution to the well-being of the human occupants of the land. Hunting has a major role to play in rural economies, and can be implemented with proper checks and balances and quotas based on sound management principles.

There is little doubt that the government of Botswana will be at the centre of a huge debate about how it should be managing its wildlife in future. Hunters should give their firm support to government for the re-opening of hunting in areas that are best suited for these activities, and where local people can benefit from regulated, well-managed and high value hunting operations.

The animal-rightists and anti-hunting lobby will of course do their best to dissuade Botswana from implementing wildlife management policies similar to those that are working in Namibia. Indeed, I have noticed a recent trend that looks like a deliberate campaign to ignore or sideline the Namibian success story, because it does not sit well with the animal-rights and anti-hunting lobby.

For example, I recently read and reviewed a new book on elephants (Pinnock, Don & Colin Bell (Compilers) (2019). The Last Elephants. Struik Nature, an imprint of Penguin Random House South Africa (Pty) Ltd, Cape Town). It is largely a propaganda piece aimed at the forthcoming CITES meeting. Under the country heading Namibia, there is a single article about ‘social structure’, ‘male and female society’, ‘genetic links’, ‘feeding activities and more in the ‘Desert-dwelling elephants of north-west Namibia’.

But nowhere is there any mention of Namibia’s success in community-based conservation, of its massive community conservation areas, of its government’s unwavering support for both trophy hunting and subsistence hunting, of the benefits that have flowed to rural communities through a balanced approach towards sustainable consumptive wildlife utilisation, alongside eco-tourism opportunities. How does Namibia manage conflicts between rural communities, elephants and lions, for example? Why does this book choose to ignore the success story of conservation in Namibia, and make no mention of one of the most significant books on the region, An Arid Eden, by Garth Owen-Smith?

Let us hope that Botswana will soon join Namibia by introducing a new wildlife policy that suits its country and its people, and not the prohibitionists who apparently cannot stand the thought of Africans benefiting from the wild animals on their land.

Dr John Ledger is an independent consultant and writer on energy and environmental issues, based in Johannesburg, South Africa. John.Ledger@wol.co.za

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